Garrett Neese/Daily Mining Gazette The walkway on Pewabic Street is one of the many additions to downtown Houghton over the past several years. The city recently received the Michigan Municipal League’s annual Community Excellence Award.

HOUGHTON — The transformation of Houghton’s downtown and the community spirit that powered it helped it win a prestigious state award.

Houghton received the Michigan Municipal League’s annual Community Excellence Award at the MML’s conference on Mackinac Island last week.

Communities submitted project nominations this spring. A committee of League members and staff whittled it down to Houghton and three finalists from downstate: Brighton, Grandville and Oak Park.

The award is given to communities for innovative placemaking projects throughout Michigan.

Projects like the new pier and the transformation of the Lakeshore Drive corridor transformed the downtown area. Since 2017, there has been about $10 million spent on projects between Dee Stadium and the Ambassador, City Manager Eric Waara said.

But what set Houghton apart, Waara said, wasn’t the millions spent tearing down the old parking deck or putting in new infrastructure, but the personal touches added along the way by people pitching in.

They culled video for the presentation from the construction firm’s footage tearing down the deck, promotional clips from Visit Keweenaw, or even cellphone footage. After weeks of storyboarding and rounds of editing, Waara got his original 19-minute presentation down to the necessary seven-minute speech for the accompanying video. He and the other finalists showcased their work to a crowd of about 500 other municipal leaders. Unlike the other candidates, who used prerecorded narration, Waara performed his live, timing the transitions precisely to match the next screen.

“The only time it went perfect was the one time it mattered,” he said.

Waara also joined the other managers in answering questions about the project in tables stationed in the gallery of the Grand Hotel. All the conference attendees filed through the gallery, which Waara described as smaller than Houghton’s city council chambers.

They had questions.

The first, almost stereotypically for a conference filled with people from downstate, is familiar to anyone traveling beyond the U.P.: “Where is Houghton?” The city’s presentation video answered it with an image of two hands to symbolize the two peninsulas, with Houghton marked at the top.

People asked about the “ginormous Christmas ball.” And there were a lot of questions about how much the city had to spend on the murals dotting the downtown. With the exception of the mural on the parking deck across from The Vault, the answer is “Whatever the paint cost.”

For the new “Welcome to Houghton, Gateway to the Keweenaw” sign on the newly exposed Lakeshore Drive parking, the city had originally sought out a professional painter. That would have cost about $3,000.

Waara’s initial response: cut out giant letters on a stencil and paint it himself. As it turns out, he didn’t even need to do that. Waara mentioned the project in passing to Joe Schwenk from Industrial Graphics, who said “No, I’ll just cut you a mask.”

Schwenk printed out the mask, which could be applied to an remnant of the inside shell of the former parking deck. Waara and a team of volunteers unrolled the mask, squeegeed it on, peeled the backing off, painted, and peeled the mask off.

Without spending $3,000, the city was able to turn those personal connections into something that looked professional, Waara said.

“People see you out there doing things,” he said. “People see your volunteers out there doing things and they want to get involved. And that makes everything better … it’s easy to spend money on concrete and pipe and build a sidewalk and stick up a streetlight. That’s easy. It’s getting it to the point where it’s built for people, and it’s built where people want to be.”

Another regionally specific question: “What is a chook?” That was in reference to the closing message of the video: Houghton’s inaugural New Year’s Eve Chook Drop.

The “chook,” or knit cap, got depicted through six sticks of three quarter-inch PVC pipe, some tees, 500 clearance Christmas lights, some fabric and a “really long extension cord.”

When it was up on the flagpole, it wasn’t clear at first how many people would come, Waara said. But the dozen people there at 11:30 p.m. became 100 people by 11:45. By the time it dropped, it was simply “packed.”

It wasn’t perfect — the chook was off by a few seconds, Waara said. But people enjoyed the spirit.

Many of them stayed to take pictures, which meant Waara didn’t get to leave until after 1 p.m. What’s more important, he said, is that it brought people together.

“That’s what it’s really all about, is giving people a place to get together in their town and talk and meet people and hang out, eat takeout and take your kids for a walk,” he said.

Some of the new features can be both perennial fixtures and blank slates for improvisation.

Take the ginormous Christmas ball. (Finally, the explanation.) A small placemaking group with the city suggested buying a large Christmas ball from Bronner’s of the kind seen in malls. The council approved it, and the city received it in September.

Here, too, what made the contribution distinctive wasn’t the capital outlay, but the DIY spirit it unleashed.

The September arrival date meant the Christmas globe could be pressed into early duty as a pumpkin. Ordering some orange fabric led to some geometry calculations of the exact dimensions of six slices that would fit the sphere perfectly, then cut triangles out for the eyes.

After the intended use as a Christmas ball, it got turned into a snowman.

“And he’s got a top hat, of course,” said Waara, who built it at his house. “Which my wife was really glad to get out of our living room.”

It’s also been Earth (currently, and also for Earth Day), a beach ball and a happy face.

Other communities are taking note. Waara became friends with the village manager of Cassopolis, in southwest Michigan, after being impressed by their award-winning presentation from two years ago. Inspired by Houghton, Cassopolis ordered a Christmas ball of their own, also arriving in September.

Waara is sending them the pattern the city uses for its covers — and throwing in a pumpkin cover the city is sewing for her.

“This whole award process is really about showing other communities that are far apart things you can ‘R & D’ — rip off and duplicate,” he said. “Rip it off, but do it your way.”